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Should We Maintain an Open Mind about Homeopathy?

It is considered unethical for modern medical practitioners to sink to this kind of deception that denies the patient his or her autonomy. Secondly, by opening the door to irrational medicine alongside evidence-based medicine, we are poisoning the minds of the public. Finally, if we don’t put a brake on the increasing self-confidence of the homeopathic establishment, they will cease to limit their attention to self-limiting or nonspecific maladies.

More, from Michael Baum and Edzard Ernst, writing in this month’s American Journal of Medicine, here.

Shockingly amateur write up. No error bars or estimates of error quoted anywhere. Look like they are measuring noise in their system to me. And besides, what exactly is the significance of testing 10^-8 AND 10^-30 simultaneously? 10^-8 + 10^-30 in this case is equal to 10^-8.

2) Lancet – This paper doesn’t really support homeopathy now does it Nancy – the paper concludes “The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition. Further research on homeopathy is warranted provided it is rigorous and systematic.”

Why did you post this paper? It is not even homeopathy. Patients were given actual plant extracts – “participants were given three months supply of capsules at the dosage recommended by the manufacturers (300 mg for persons under 90 kg, and 450 mg for persons over 90 kg, equivalent to 6g and 9g dried rhizome, respectively).”

I dealt with this in 5 minutes whilst cooking my dinner. Seriously Nancy, you should really give it a rest. Your ability to critically read and appraise scientific work is non-existant.”

“Seventeen of 103 patients withdrew from treatment or were lost to follow-up.”

“Although group differences were not statistically significant on four out of the five MFI subscales (the primary outcome measures), more people in the homeopathic medicine group showed clinically significant improvement. More people in the homeopathic medicine group showed clinical improvement on all primary outcomes (relative risk=2.75, P=.09).”

“There is weak but equivocal evidence that the effects of homeopathic medicine are superior to placebo. Results also suggest that there may be nonspecific benefits from the homeopathic consultation. Further studies are needed to determine whether these differences hold in larger samples.“

e·quiv·o·cal/iˈkwivəkəl/Adjective
1. Open to more than one interpretation; ambiguous.
2. Uncertain or questionable in nature.